Thursday, 26 June 2008

Facebook Translation application and list of languages now supported in Facebook

The new Facebook Translation application will see Facebook quickly adding more languages to the list of languages that Facebook is currently available in.

So far in 2008 Facebook has been translated into the following languages:

Launch of Facebook in Spanish: February 7thLaunch of Facebook in German: March 3rdLaunch of Facebook in French: March 10thLaunch of Facebook in Dutch: May 14thLaunch of Facebook in Italian: May 14thLaunch of Facebook in Norwegian: May 14thLaunch of Facebook in Polish: May 14thLaunch of Facebook in Japanese: May 19thLaunch of Facebook in Korean: May 28thLaunch of Facebook in Catalan: June 2ndLaunch of Facebook in Czech: June 10thLaunch of Facebook in Danish: June 10thLaunch of Facebook in Finnish: June 10thLaunch of Facebook in Portuguese (Brazilian): June 10thLaunch of Facebook in Swedish: June 10thLaunch of Facebook in Chinese: June 19thLaunch of Facebook in Russian: June 19th

Users can select their desired Facebook operating language at the base of any Facebook page.

In much the same way that Google are speeding up their image labelling by using a public interface (Google Image Labeler) to harness the crowd, so Facebook are now seeking to use the same crowdsourcing technique with site translation.

To date Facebook have used a combination of professional translators and Facebook user volunteers to translate the site. As translation gets harder and languages become more obscure, Facebook are using a new approach to Facebook Translation.

Facebook aim to imminently launch in another 63 languages (including Asian languages, African dialects and random languages like Esperanto). These languages have been opened up for translation by the Facebook community through the new Facebook Translation application.

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